YCA Immigration Workshop Questions

What is Immigration?

Leaving one land, community, or neighborhood for another, whether it be forcefully or willingly.

Why do immigrants leave their home countries?

Political shit, persecution, job "opportunities".

What is your relationship to immigration?

My parents, grandparents, brother, uncles and aunts are immigrants and I am a product of them. And I've seen them grow with me. I have a simple connection, but a collected connection.

When have you ever had to hide who you are? Why did you hide?

I hid for a while in high school. Reading and caring about shit wasn't cool so I couldn't let people know about it. I felt like my first year or so at Columbia I was just lying to myself, in terms of writing about any place I knew was familiar to me. I was writing stories about Paul and John and Amy (not that there is anything wrong with writing stories about them) but what i hadn't done yet was write stories about Claribel, and Cheli, and Pepe. A lot of it was fear that people wouldn't understand or care for it, I'm glad I was wrong.

Have you ever ben forced to move? What did it feel like?

When i moved from the North side of Chicago to the South Side, it was terrible. All of my friends and the whole world that I knew and had lived around for all of my fifteen years of life was in danger, all of a sudden, of being wiped out by a nuclear blast of raised rent in our measely little one bedroom apartment.

Describe a place where an immigrant is welcome.

Sometimes its in obvious places, like certain neighborhoods, other times its worrisome places: places in which no other person would want the job that they will have for a long time.

What daily borders do you cross? What do these borders look, taste, smell, sound like?

My first year at Columbia was a huge border crossing. I'd never met a young white people. My age. Some places are cleaner than others, some quieter, some louder and warmer like the restaurant i work in. Some are in words and music and in the shape of people I never thought i would meet or become friends with.